Author: alk

I suppose a trip down the relatively un-traveled canyon of Yosemite, Tanaya Canyon, had been a goal of mine for several years, mainly because of what I’d heard about the spectacular views of the great Half Dome down the gorge. But once I was there, hiking—or should I say boulder-hopping and climbing–with my proficient son and five other (novice) climbers, I realized that I might be in over my head. Rappelling down rock walls with fully loaded backpacks, sometimes into waterfalls and cold pools, precarious rock-hopping across the tumbling, roaring creek, and traversing steep granite slabs, struggling to find very ill-defined trails in the dark, together with a foot injury problem that had been plaguing me for several years, all created a situation in which I had nowhere to turn except to my understanding of God’s protecting, preserving, and comforting presence with me at all times.

As good as my intentions were, however, fear and concern still hovered around me. It was once written that “worry is the lowest form of thought” or that fear and worry claim to be necessary, but actually have no useful purpose at all. And my favorite definition of worry—“Ingratitude in advance.”

Well, I must admit, I was worried and fearful, both for my own well-being and for the safety of our little group. That week, the Christian Science Bible lesson had been on the subject of Truth, another word for God, and many of the references were centered on taking the “right path” or walking the straight and narrow without straying off-course from the truth of God’s ever-presence and His guiding Hand. This was exactly what I needed, as I struggled to hold my thought in sync with Truth. I must say, however, that more times than I care to admit, I allowed my thought to stray, and intrusive fear-mongering thoughts would flood in. I found myself complaining about precarious situations or expressing my doubts about which way we were choosing to go as we worked our way over boulders and down the gorge. (It was only later, after the trip, that I learned that every year several hikers perish, trying to negotiate this canyon without proper understanding of its perils).

After several false stops and starts at adjusting my thought, I prayed along the lines of trusting that our real “team leader” was divine Mind, giving us the insight and wisdom to take the correct ways, make the right moves, and use the right precautions as we made our way down the canyon. And I must say, it wasn’t as much I, but both of my sons (my other son was along as well), who rose to the occasion with a calming presence, assuring us all that we could all accomplish this task successfully, without any incidence of injury or danger. And on several occasions my climbing-proficient son made some unusual directional decisions for the group that were crucial to bringing us down the gorge successfully and fully intact. We completed the hike, fully trail-tested, but safe and grateful.

It has been said that the secret to life’s peace and happiness has nothing to do with what happens to you or what situations you find yourself in, but has everything to do with how you respond. And every day we can each strive to do a better job of responding to every situation in daily life with a renewed awakening to God’s, Love’s, ever-protecting and guiding presence. This way, our lives are no longer made up of outward situations that the human mind wants to label as “good” or “bad”, but rather a deep inner assurance that brings our peace into the situation and results only in a further awakening to God’s love.

S.V.

Recently, during a stay at our cabin in the Sierra, I was stacking firewood outside and heard a loud bang.  Looking around to where the sound had come from, I noticed a bird had evidently smacked into one of the cabin windows.  It lay motionless and I exclaimed out loud “Oh No!”

Saying this reminded me of an article that I had read many years ago in the Christian Science Sentinel entitled “Don’t Go Down to the Plain of Oh No”.  The author recalled that in the Bible story of Nehemiah, who is in charge of the work to restore the broken down walls surrounding Jerusalem, that an enemy continually asks him to come down to the plane of Ono to talk.  Nehemiah recognizes that this was a ruse to stop the important work and wisely declines saying, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? “  This play on words reminded me that I too had important work to do (pray) and declined to go down to the plain of Oh No!

Jesus says in the book of Matthew “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered”.  I reasoned that God must also have all the feathers counted on this little bird too.  I silently vowed to witness in my thinking the unending fact of God’s care for this small but precious idea of His. I refused to allow even a look at the bird, feeling that it would distract me from the work of seeing this bird as God had made and maintained it.

I continued to pray with thoughts that came to me and even stacked a few more pieces of wood, feeling more and more confident that God was the source of this bird’s being.  I did happen to look at some point and noticed that the little guy was now standing upright and moving his head.  Rejoicing in this outward expression of the facts that I was witnessing in my thinking, I looked away again to affirm in my thought that no after effects or side effects could result from God’s constant, seamless care of his creation, which included this bird.  Soon, heading into the cabin, I saw that the bird was no longer there!

L.R.R.

Swimming is an activity I enjoy a great deal.  However, the first time I went swimming this spring, one of my ears stopped up.  This had never happened before, but I didn’t think much about it and assumed it would soon correct itself.  However, for several weeks as I continued to swim the ear continued to be stopped up.  At that point I realized I needed to pray about it.  I affirmed that every function of my body is governed by the one divine Mind, which is God, and thus performs normally and harmoniously.  The principle of God’s harmonious universe provides that an activity that expresses God, such as swimming, can’t result in harm or an abnormal condition.

However, several weeks passed, the ear didn’t clear, and I noticed that a numbness was creeping into my cheek.  At that point several fear-filled questions flooded my consciousness:  What is this?  Why doesn’t it go away?  Will it affect my hearing?

I dealt with these fears by more diligently turning to what I’ve learned about God’s all-good government.  The first chapter of Genesis states that man is made in the image and likeness of God, thus is spiritual and perfect.  Since God is constant, unchanging goodness, I reasoned that I must also be all good, and couldn’t lose that perfection (even if it appeared to be so).  My true spiritual substance as an idea of God could not be affected by any material condition or circumstance, and consistently acknowledging this brought it out in my experience.

As I continued to affirm the truth (as God sees it) about my identity and deny any abnormal condition, my fears left, the ear cleared and did not get stopped up again.   I continue to swim with joy and gratitude!

NH

The sun has often been used as a symbol of God’s presence and power, both in the Bible and in Mrs. Eddy’s writings. I had an experience about 20 years ago that brought that symbol vividly to life for me. For some weeks, I’d been experiencing unexplained pains in my body, especially the breasts, upper and underarms. And I had found a lump in one breast. The media is so full of information about cancer and its symptoms, that we take it in unwittingly. I became very fearful that these physical signs meant cancer in the breast and/or lymph glands. As a lifelong Christian Scientist, I prayed about this situation as I’d been taught (and had proven many times) and had the prayerful support of a Christian Science practitioner to help me see my true reality as a spiritual child of God, untouched by disease — to see myself as God sees me. But the fear was great.

One night I felt the need to stay up studying my Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings to gain a sense of peace. I was in the guest room with east-facing glass doors. I dozed and woke during the night of study, still experiencing pain and renewed fear. Then toward dawn, as light was starting to fill the sky outside the room, I thought of the image of God as the life-giving, all-encompassing “sun” of my being. And as the light increased, I was suddenly struck with the absolute inevitability of that sunrise — nothing could stop that sun from coming up and filling my world with light, just as nothing could stop God’s presence and all-power from maintaining me as He created me: “pure, upright, whole and free” as it says in one of our hymns. That was the turning point: the fear was gone and within a few days, all the symptoms were gone, along with the lump. The peace and inspiration of that dawn time is described beautifully in #317 in the Christian Science Hymnal. One verse reads: “So shall it ever be in the bright morning, when hearts awaking see the shadows flee. O, in that hour, and fairer than the dawning, rises the glorious thought, I am with Thee.”

C. O.

On a recent Saturday, I was struggling with a cold and a sore throat that looked like they would keep me at home for the day. This was frustrating because my sister and I were going to be participating in a local tennis doubles tournament that afternoon. After sulking for an hour, walking around the house, I began to notice all of my resources: the C.S. Sentinel magazines on the counter in the kitchen and the dining room table, a Science & Health on the kitchen table, the Bible-lesson in my backpack, the Sentinel radio edition CD in our car. This was a good reminder that I could and can always turn to God, Love.

I curled up on the couch in the living room and began to read a healing that was published in the Sentinel magazine. One of the passages from Science & Health that had helped the man in his healing really stood out to me. It says,

“Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of divine Mind” (p. 162).

While the whole rigid muscles and tumors thing wasn’t really what I was looking for, the part about “change of base” and yielding to the harmony of divine Mind was very helpful. At camp, one counselor talked about instead of struggling with a problem or holding onto it, to simply “Let go and let God”. I began to accept certain facts about myself and my relationship with God. After reading the passage in the Sentinel, I decided to look it up in Science & Health to read it in context. I ended up reading almost the whole chapter, and then continuing on to Physiology. I read a little in Prayer, Footsteps of Truth and then flipped to some of our Sunday School’s favorite pages, the 390’s. As I was reading, I began to forget about the cold, and got more and more into the reading. I paused when the phone rang and realized that I hadn’t even blown my nose for at least 30-40 minutes.

However, at that point, I began to feel the same symptoms again and was slightly discouraged. I decided that it was okay to blow my nose, but I was going to keep my mind on the spiritual track. Every time I took a tissue, I would take a pen and write one small truth on the actual tissue box. Some of the ones I wrote were:
“Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance.”
“God is Love.
“Thou art whole.”
“Blot out the images of mortal thought and its beliefs in sickness and sin.”
“Divine Mind has all power.”
“The indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the conditions of matter.”

After doing this for a while, I remembered something else. I had built my house on the rock, not the sand, and so therefore nothing could shake or break my strong house.

I again became very engrossed in my reading and writing, and when I stopped for a moment to de-smudge the box, I realized I was singing to myself (Mothers Evening Prayer, a hymn by Mary Baker Eddy), something that I hadn’t been able to do all morning. Immediately, I felt my head clear as well as my nose and I could swallow painlessly. I got up and found myself fully energetic. I had an urge to go jump on the trampoline! I am so grateful for this experience and for Christian Science, and especially God!

M. A.

In July, my family held their family reunion at Lake Tahoe. There were about 20 of us, including several of my teen-aged grandchildren and their friends. One day, 15 of us decided to rent bicycles for a 4-hour bike ride. I had not been on a bike for over 25 years, so I “practiced” in the Lodge parking lot.

After riding about 1-2 hours down to the south edge of Lake Tahoe for our picnic lunch, I hit a tricky curve and flew head over heels. When my sons picked the bike up and away from me, I heard a sound like a bone cracking in my ankle. I started praying for myself, knowing that I couldn’t fall from God’s grace, and that accidents could not happen to a child of God. I could not break away from God’s goodness and perfection, which I continually express.

I was able to ride for another 20 minutes to the lunch spot, but when I tried to get back on the bike after lunch, my ankle had swollen and there was pain when I tried to walk. I was able to get a ride back to the lodge, where I tried to get comfortable and called a Christian Science practitioner. He told me how he and his wife had been skiing years ago, and she fell and fractured her ankle coming down the slope. The ski patrol brought her down the hill. While she lay on the bed in pain, he prayed, but with no improvement. Finally he realized he was starting from the wrong premise. He was praying to heal a fractured ankle–to make it well. He should have started with God and prayed to see that as God’s image and likeness, she could only express God’s perfection. He didn’t have to petition God to make an injured body into a well body, since in God’s sight, she was never touched by harm. Starting from this correct premise melted the conviction of pain and injury, with the result that the next morning she jumped out of bed and skied comfortably all day.

I expected to get the same results! But it took me a little longer. I needed my son to drive me back home from the reunion, as I was not able to do so. The hardest thing for me through this experience was to erase the mental picture of seeing myself lying on the ground, and hearing the crack of the bone. But the material senses do not have any genuine authority or reality in God’s sight. Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, tells us that “..Man is not material; he is spiritual.” (P. 468 in Science and Health.)

I was inspired and uplifted by daily prayer and treatment from the practitioner, and in about 2 weeks I had a complete healing. During this time, my family called or e-mailed me every day and I would say, “All is well.” The truth was that I could not express anything that God was not expressing! What really needed correcting was believing I could be separated from God. After all, God made everything, and He made it good. (The Bible tells us so!) So now I can take my 4-mile daily walks and play golf every week. I expect to be able to climb the mountains again at our next family reunion. All truly is well!

J.P.

On Wednesday afternoon recently, I was trimming deadheads with a pair of electric grass clippers and accidentally cut into a finger on my left hand. The shock and blood sent me running into the house where my husband cleaned and bandaged the wound. My first thought about this was from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. She writes, “Accidents are unknown to God…” on page 424* and although the complete sentence did not come to me at the time, I reasoned that since God did not know it, I could go back and finish the task at hand, which I did. After dinner, I attended the Christian Science Wednesday night testimony meeting in Orinda. At this service the congregation is invited to pray for all gathered there. I prayed for the health and well-being of all present, acknowledging each one’s relationship to the divine consciousness, Mind. I did not specifically include myself, as by then I had quite forgotten about my finger. When I got home, my husband offered to change the bandage before we went to bed. When the old dressing was removed, we discovered that there was nothing showing but a pink line where the cut had occurred. My heart was filled with gratitude and in a few days nothing remained and it would have been impossible to even find a trace of the cut.

HF

*(The complete sentence in the chapter Christian Science Practice reads: “Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God’ unerring direction and thus bring out harmony.”)

I’ve lived in Northern California for almost twenty-five years, and when the month of May arrives, allergies have been a struggle for me. Sometimes it has been worse than others, but always a struggle. I have had so many physical healings through the application of truths I’ve found Christian Science, but somehow this seemed in another category. I used to think I just had to get through it, for once June came, I was pretty free.

This past May was no exception, and in the first week I found myself sneezing and wheezing unmercifully. I am a school teacher, and one day I could hardly get through a complete sentence without sneezing multiple times and, of course, blowing my nose. My students felt so sorry for me. I went to a meeting after school, and they finally adjourned it early in sympathy for the pathetic state I was in. Several well-meaning colleagues offered me Claritin, a popular allergy medicine. That kind of caught my attention, not because I wanted the Claritin, but because I wasn’t using my form of medicine, which is prayer.

I got in the car to go home, and in desperation for something to help me think better, I pulled out a Christian Science Sentinel Radio program CD that someone had given me. I hadn’t listened to it, despite having had it for months, but I was delighted to find a remarkable healing of allergies as one of the four healings given. The speaker voiced the very same thing I had been thinking, that somehow this allergy problem was outside the realm of possibility to be healed. She said,  “I just thought I had to put up with it,” and then she talked about something that I found very interesting. To the medical world, there is no real “healing”of allergies; all you can do is manage the symptoms. That is all, for instance, that Claritin could do. She began to see that real healing was possible, for all we are ever working with is “thought”. My thoughts about pollen seemed to induce this reaction. But what was pollen, something outside of God’s love for me, something that could separate me from good, from freedom, from health? I listened to that healing on the CD several times and the light just went on in my thought about the naturalness of healing this belief. I wasn’t changing the body to stop reacting, but I was seeing myself purely spiritually, untouched by the belief of reaction. I was free that night. I listened to the same healing three times again on my way to school the next morning. My thought had completely turned around from the inevitability of this problem every spring, to the absolute insistence in my thought that I was free, that pollen or any atmospheric belief could not separate me from God. And I was free all that day. Once of my students even noted that I wasn’t sneezing any more and what a difference that was. (It had been almost comical the day before). That was it, the rest of the month, not a sneeze. The change was like night and day.

I am so grateful for this change of thought and for this woman’s willingness to share her testimony, as I want now to share mine. There is no physical situation that is outside the realm of healing, of that I am sure.

R.A.